Dear AAP Students, Faculty, Staff, and Alumni

As the Director of AAP, I would like to respond to the e-mails that some concerned AAP students recently sent to Chancellor Block. All programs at UCLA are facing difficult budget cuts next year. For AAP Tutoring, these cuts come on top of a series of previous cuts. For the current 2008-9 academic year, AAP Tutoring reduced its expenses by 30%. We reduced the number of courses offered for tutoring, increased the size of tutoring groups, requested assistance from academic departments, and reduced administrative costs. There is no doubt that the cuts scheduled for the 2009-10 academic year will mean further reducing services critical to AAP'students. However, we are doing what we can to maintain the most essential services.

Whenever faced with budget cuts, AAP Tutoring has worked hard to cut wisely those areas that will have the least negative impact on AAP students. AAP Tutoring responded to next year's cuts by reducing tutoring for general education science courses that target non-science majors; in addition, some language and social science courses will also be reduced. However, AAP will maintain tutoring for writing courses, introductory math and science courses, and a significant number of large social science courses.

Currently, we are unable to provide support to students writing history, sociology, or political science papers. AAP will continue to work hard to support students striving to improve their writing, but at this time, we must limit our support to those students enrolled in composition courses.

Our commitment to writing is strong, and we are currently working to retain writing as a core mission for AAP Tutoring. Our Lab Coordinators fully support AAP's desire to retain writing tutorials even though it may mean their labs take larger cuts; they, too, believe that writing is at the heart of UCLA¹s academic mission and an essential component of AAP Tutoring. Furthermore, AAP Humanities Tutoring will not be suspended in 2009-10. However, the Humanities Lab will merge with the Social Science Tutoring Lab to maximize resources in the face of current and projected budget reductions.

Writing is central to a university education and the foundation for all academic excellence. Our support for students working to improve their academic writing is among the last things to cut because it is essential to their success at UCLA and beyond.

We appreciate hearing your concerns and ideas, and we welcome all suggestions that will help AAP support the tutorial needs of our students.

Charles J. Alexander, Ph.D.
Associate Vice Provost for Student Diversity
Director, Academic Advancement Program (AAP)
1232 Campbell Hall
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90095
310-206-1551 office
310-206-2595 fax
www.ucla.edu/aap